


Ich schenk dir mein Leben

by myrskytuuli



Series: Hetalia avengers short stories [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hetalia: Axis Powers, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Prussia is a good brother, everyone is sad, ww2 angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:25:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrskytuuli/pseuds/myrskytuuli
Summary: It's WW2, Steve meets people who try to kill him, people who save him, and ends up pitying all of them.





	

During the second world war, Steve saw things. Things of beauty, and things of horror. Things of mundane and things of fantastic. Liberating Hydra bases had the unfortunate side effect that you became used to seeing things that you would never have imagined to be possible. Acts that Steve could never had imagined that another human being could be able to imagine, never mind commit. Most of these things were of such horrifying nature that they followed Steve through his dreams and even with time, would never truly let go.

But sometimes there were other things. Unexplained things, like the brief brush with death that Steve had behind the enemy lines in Germany. Like the man with red eyes, who had managed to match Steve on hand to hand combat.

They had been on a rescue mission, searching for lost troops, or more precisely looking for their leader, General Jones. The higher ups had been insistent that General Jones had to be found, sending Captain America himself to lead the scouting mission.

Things were not going to plan, which was highlighted by the fact that Steve and the Commandoes were currently in a middle of a hasty and unorganised retreat. Technically they had a strict code of always sticking together, but reality sometimes interfered, which is why Steve found himself alone in the middle of the German wilderness, desperately hoping that he was running in the same direction that his comrades had disappeared to.

Steve did not have time to ponder for such things for long, as it started to become clear that something was following him. Or someone. Steve had an inkling that he would not get as lucky as only having to worry about the local fauna. Slowing his pace, Steve tried to hone his senses. Was there a sound of footsteps on his right? Was that human made sound over there-

Something slammed into Steve hard on his right side. Something fast, hard and strong. It lifted him straight off from the ground with the force it slammed into him, and threw him several feet on to the side. As Steve rolled on the ground, his battle instincts kicked in, and despite the fact that all air had been punched from his lungs, Steve scrambled to stand up immediately.

Taking into account what his body had reported him, Steve wold have expected to be slammed by a rogue cannonball. What his eyes reported him was that he had in fact been assaulted by a human. The man with dirty Nazi uniform and ashen hair regarded Steve with eyes that, in the darkness, Steve could have sworn glinted pure demonic red.

“Oh, You’re not America.” The attacker said, looking vaguely disappointed. Steve did not stop to ask questions now that he had his footing back, instead opting to instantly take an offensive, throwing his shield to knock down the rifle from the German’s hands. The German responded easily, leaning out of the way, but the shield thrown towards him did its job and knocked the rifle from the man’s hands. Steve was not far behind his shield, fist ready to connect with the man’s face. His punch however never got the change to land, as Steve’s assailant grabbed the fist coming towards his face in his own. For a second they both stood still, Steve feeling a flash of panic realising that this stranger had stood his ground against his serum-enchanted strength. Then the shield, that had rebounded from nearby tree, struck the German in the head from behind, knocking them both apart.

The German however did not go down unconscious, as Steve might have hoped. Instead he nimbly rolled back up, cursing furiously in German and leaped again to Steve. A string of rabid German came from his mouth, that Steve had no hope of making any sense of. This time the German stayed close and kept Steve engaged, so that he did not gain the opportunity to throw his shield again, and did not have time to reach any of his weapons. The white-haired man was not only eerily strong, but terrifyingly smart fighter. He seemed to learn to predict Steve’s fighting style by the seconds, and was viciously effective in exploiting every opening that was given to him. Not once had the man made any moves to reach for his rifle laying on the ground, and it was becoming clear that this man would not need bullets to win the fight against Captain America. Even in the midst of their duel, Steve couldn’t help but wonder if he was meeting some rogue Hydra experiment. It would explain the unnatural eye colour.

“You’re good.” The German quipped with a large grin on his face, as he got close, face only inches from Steve’s. “America has made you well.” This close Steve could see that his own eyes had not been lying, the eyes of his assaulter were indeed red.  

Steve felt the bite of metal going through his side. Another even sharper pain followed as Steve’s attacker yanked the blade sideways, so that it left behind a long horizontal wound from his navel to his side. Blood spurted with abandon from the wound, and Steve could see his life flashing before his eyes. His legs wobbled, and his vision seemed to swing between overtly bright clarity and black spots.

He fell on his knees, one hand coming to rest upon the ground, keeping Steve still at least kneeling, and the other hand was holding onto his side where his body was unravelling. Standing over him the German man looked like the Devil itself, embodying all the horrors of this war.

Steve would have died then, he knows this, had it not been the perfectly timed intervention by his loyal friends. The Howling commandos, accompanied by the lost troops and General Jones himself, had come to his rescue in the last second, before the albino Nazi had time to bring his knife down to slit Steve’s throat.

Through the ringing of his ears, Steve could hear Bucky shouting his name and an unfamiliar voice yelling: “You kill him, and I swear to God I will dropkick your ass straight out of Europe!”

“Oh Look. I’ll have to surrender now.” The German man calmly stated, still smiling that unsettling smile down at Steve and sheathed his knife back to its sheath by his belt. He looked faintly amused, and for some reason even content.

Upon later reflection, Steve would blame the blood loss for what he felt when General Jones stepped into his field of vision. There was nothing special about the man, if maybe not his youth considering his position. Dirty blond hair, average build, worried blue eyes behind glasses. There was nothing special about Jones, expect for the fact that Steve instantly fell in love with him, as he saw him.

Steve couldn’t have looked away if his life would have depended on it, because this man, kneeling in front of him and efficiently checking over Steve’s wound, was someone Steve knew he would die for without hesitation, without a blink. He wanted to reach out and protect General Jones, he wanted to fall down by his feet and just be accepted. He wanted to cherish him and he wanted to be useful to him. It was a fierce and patriotic love, and it felt like all the scattered feelings that had made him enlist again and again in the army, had crystallized into one ball of desperate love towards the oblivious General Jones.

“Hey! Take it easy okay.” General Jones said, putting pressure to Steve’s wound and meeting the Captain’s eyes. “Thank you. For coming for me.” Had Steve not been in such excruciating pain, he might have noticed how awe-struck General Jones was to finally meet the fabled Captain America.

“I would do anything for you.” Steve exhaled, perfectly honest, and then promptly lost consciousness.

 

After that, Steve swam in and out of consciousness, never quite grasping what was real and what wasn’t. In some of his dreams Bucky was crying over him. In others he was back in Brooklyn, and his mother was alive. In one, there was pain and yelling, and General Jones shouting: “It’s fine, I have the correct blood type, I will donate-!”

Steve was pretty sure that he was awake, alive, and lucid, when he awoke to darkness, smell of blood, and pain throbbing on his side. He could more feel than hear the presence of another person by his side, but he was still too fatigued to make his new conscious presence known. He would have probably fallen back to sleep, if it hadn’t been the voices entering the tent that made him curious enough to cling to consciousness.

“General, it’s the prisoner, he insists on speaking to you. I told him-“

“Oh. Bring him in then.”

“Sir. I cannot bring a Nazi prisoner in here when the Captain is laying right there vulnerable and you are attached to him by a tube.”

“It’s fine, Herr. Beilschmidt won’t try anything. He knows he is outnumbered.”

“With all due respect sir-!”

“Bring him here and leave us. This is an order.”

“I…Yes sir.” Came the faintly dazed reply of someone who sounded almost like forces outside of their understanding were compelling him to obey.

There was a spell of silence, and the smart thing to do would have been to make his presence known to General Jones, or to slip back to sleep. Steve didn’t do either, but instead lingered in a sense of awareness.

There were again voices, of people entering the tent, of the prisoner being secured into a chair, of Jones ordering his men to leave, and finally an amused accented voice saying, “Look at you, you’ve grown up.”

“Yeah, world wars tend to do that to a guy.” Came the bitter response.

“Ah, but not that much I see. You still aren’t used to it.”

“To what? War? Who is used to war?”

“I am.”

There was a spell of silence, which was broken by General Jones sounding incredibly tired.

“Why are you here Gilbert? I’m not in a mood for you right now. You almost killed the Captain.”

The German snorted. “We are in a war junge. The entire point of it is to kill each other’s men. It isn’t like we haven’t already mowed down thousands of each other’s soldiers.”

“But the Captain is-“

“Spezial. I know what he is. The instructions for building him came originally from us, don’t forget that.”

“…”

 “He felt like you. That’s why I attacked him. I thought that he was you.”

“I didn’t think that you would feel anything anymore, now that you are no longer a-“

“Don’t say it bengel. The land you are standing right now still belongs to the Free State of Prussia. I still notice a trespasser when one so boldly sneaks through the lines.”

“So tell me then, is the Free State of Prussia then in control of the Hydra compounds, one of which we just busted. Because what I saw in there, it sure didn’t look like there were lots of love for the fatherland going in there.”

The German barked a dry laugh laced with pure pain. A sound that for the first time made Steve realise that the man that had almost managed to kill him, was more than just eerie smiles and manic laughs.

“Aaah…Yes. Hydra. We are creating more monsters by the minute with this war. We should have known after what happened with Schmidt. Monsters breed monsters.”

If Steve had had any doubts over eavesdropping into this conversation, all of those doubts disappeared in that moment. It had become clear that both parties of this conversation knew more about the project rebirth than anyone Steve had ever met, including Steve himself. Feigning convincing sleep became that much more important right then.

“I talked with Erskine once, he said that things went wrong with Schmidt?”

“It burned him from the inside. He lied to us, told us that he was doing it all for Germany. He pledged his heart and soul for Germany, and then the blood burned him from the inside out. You got lucky with the golden boy over there. It only works if they love their countries more than their own life. Nation-blood is too potent to be injected into a human otherwise. Schmidt didn’t listen. He only saw a way to become one of us. That schweinepriester doesn’t give two shits about Germany! I would kill him myself if I could! I would kill the whole lot of them!”

When it came to passion towards your country, this Beilschmidt didn’t seem to have any problems. There was passion in his voice, true, pure, desperate, raw passion that sent shivers down Steve’s spine, and forced him to focus on keeping his breathing even. Intellectually Steve had always known that most of the men that he met on the battlefield were not bad men. They were patriotic Germans, who fought for their country, just as Steve fought for his.

Still, the idea that the cruel violence, that had almost killed Steve earlier, was due to love, was one of those realisations of war that would haunt in the back of his mind for a long time.

General Jones’ voice sounded small and almost weak compared to the passionate outburst from the German.

“How the fuck did we end up here? We used to be friends. You taught me to fight, how is it that now I have to fight against you again and again?”

“Gott, you are young. It is so easy to forget, how fast you have risen in power, how young you just are. Listen here kleiner adler.” Now the German’s tone took a much softer note. Almost shockingly soft coming from a Nazi prisoner. “This is not like the other wars. They are going to kill him. My brother has no way out. Hitler will not relinquish him to the allies alive, and if the allies manage to wrangle him from Hitler, then they will execute him. No, don’t say anything, I want you to listen you damn yank! I’m here to tell you that if you win this war, you will spare my brother! The Europeans will demand blood, and that blood will be mine! The common consensus will be that I was the bad influence and you will agree. You will fucking argue for that point, and you will make sure that between me and him, I will be the one to die!”

“But…”

“You said it yourself. It only makes sense, after all, I am no longer a-“

“But we were friends! You taught me how to fight.”

“Yes. I taught your sorry ass how to fight and now you will pay me back by putting a bullet through my skull when the day of judgement comes. You will convince the others to dissolve me when the time comes, not him! I will not watch my brother die, for what Hitler made him! Promise me. Promise me!”

Steve couldn’t help it, his breathing hitched. The intensity and feelings in the room were too much. Both men instantly snapped their mouths shut and even thought Steve had his eyes shut, he could feel their eyes on him.

“I think that we are quite done here.” The German prisoner calmly stated. Sounding again nothing more than an emotionless nazi soldier. The contrasts to his broken voice just seconds before was shocking.

After the prisoner had been taken away, it was again only him and General Jones in the army tent. Now that Steve had his eyes open, he could see that he and General Jones were connected by very dubious looking piece of equipment that had been scrapped together from who knows what and that now served to transfer blood from General Jones to Steve.

“You might have died of blood loss. The serum of course gives you already some healing abilities, but little extra blood can’t hurt.” General Jones smiled at him, a sad smile.

“Thank you,” was the only thing Steve managed to say. They lapsed into silence. There were thousands of questions on Steve’s mind, and he was too afraid to ask any of them.

After a long silence General Jones opened his mouth again. “When I was a teenager, I used to be little bit in love with that man.” He confessed with a voice barely above a whisper.

Steve didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could think of to say. The silence around them was heavy and Steve felt endless amount of grief. For General Jones, and for the world, and even for Herr. Beilschmidt, who was so desperate to die in the place of his brother.

 

The next morning, Steve woke up to the sight of Bucky sleeping on the same chair that had earlier been occupied by General Jones, and found out that their prisoner had escaped during the night. Nobody could explain how, but Steve had his suspicions, even if he kept them by himself.

 

70 years later, Steve Rogers was reminded of that miserable night of almost dying in Europe, while he was on his morning jog in D.C. He had been cooling down, enjoying the sight of people starting to fill the streets, when a loud group of three caught his eye.

A loudmouthed young American was leading an equally loudmouthed young German, if the accent was to be trusted, around. Between them walked a blonde who was a head taller than either of his friends and was face-palming at his loudmouthed companions’ antics. Otherwise it would have been such a common sight, that Steve wold have hardly paid attention, you could see students leading exchange students around the city all the time, but there was a pang of familiarity in them that made Steve’s heart constrict in his chest.

The American, who was currently arguing with his friend whether to eat at McDonald’s or not, had the same shade of dirty blonde hair that General Jones had once a lifetime ago had. The memory of almost confessing his love to the poor man in his blood loss caused delirium, always brought up a mix of embarrassment and fondness to Steve, but mostly lingering nostalgia.

The shortest one of the group, the German with ashen blond hair, on the other hand brought back memories of pain and red eyes shining with blood lust, but also memories of a broken voice begging mercy for his brother. Steve wondered if that same voice would have sounded as light and happy in different circumstances, as the voice that he could hear right now, calling out: “Bruder! Don’t lag behind!”

The three continued in their merry way, and Steve felt at the same time infinitely sad for those who had suffered so much in the past, but also so infinitely happy for the new generation, who had the change to grow up happy. He found himself hoping that all those years ago, General Jones and Herr. Beilschmidt had in the end found something akin to peace. That by some twist of fate the German man’s brother at least had been spared. That not every promised horror in this world had been delivered.

For Steve, the horrors of the war were still painted behind his eyelids, but the world around him had changed and healed, and most of the time, the fact helped Steve to heal too.

 


End file.
